Berserk

"I think just a weekend," Jo said. "Any longer may not be very nice."

"Just a weekend," Tom said. He stood and kissed his wife, hugged her, tickled her ear and stepped back as she aimed a slap at his arm. "See you later. Love you."

"Love you too," she said, already standing to prepare for work. "I'll be home a bit later tonight. I need to finish this design before the end of the week."

"I'll cook tea," Tom said. He smiled, and when Jo gave him a smile in return he saw the real, sad depth to her that no banter or play could ever hide.

That lunchtime at work, Tom booked a cottage on the edge of Salisbury Plain for the second weekend in October. It was a remote location, set just outside a little village, an old cottage with two bedrooms, a downstairs toilet, an open log fire and a cold room beneath the kitchen where occupants had once stored their meat and other perishables. It was a ten-minute walk from the nearest pub and restaurant, and a half-hour drive from the military areas of Salisbury Plain. If Steven's ghost haunted the Plain, they would be within shouting distance.

Tom often wondered about ghosts. Steven is always with us, Jo said, but she meant as a memory, the reality of him retained by their never letting his moment in life fade away. But when they were dead and gone, what then? Would their son become nothing more than a number in an army report, a photograph, an occasional thought for his surviving friends? And after that… nothing. How could someone so alive suddenly become so dead? Tom hated this way of thinking, yet he had always possessed a mind prone to exploring the more esoteric areas of life, and Steven's death encouraged that rather than lessened it. Some nights, napping on the settee next to Jo, he found himself wandering the moors, drifting above those dark acres of fern and grass, skipping across marshland, passing through occasional small woods where animals lived from year to year without ever seeing a human being. And occasionally, in the darkest moments, he saw Steven roaming the Plain, confused at his sudden death, crying … crying for his mother and father … because he was far too young to die.

Tom would open his eyes, stare at the familiar four walls of his home, and despair at the brief but intense sense of hopelessness that always followed.

It was a bad afternoon. He sat at his desk and stared out the window, occasionally shuffling papers or opening up new files on his computer to convince himself, at least, that he was working. Steven was there as always, but there was also the huge chasm of emptiness and regret that threatened to swallow Tom whole: regret at a life wasted behind a desk, watching his ambitions and drive rot beneath an assault of nine-to-five indifference; and the emptiness in his own mind, where once had dwelled such grand aspirations. He had always regarded his job as a means to an end, but he had never come close to achieving that end. He sat at his desk for five days each week crunching numbers and paying for his mortgage, forever mourning the career in music that continued to elude him. So many opportunities taken up and blown away, so many deals scuppered because of bad luck or his own stupidity. The fact that he had barely played a note since his son's death did little to quell his regrets.

In their third bedroom Tom's instruments sat on their stands, monuments to lost dreams. They had once been the means by which he hoped to make his mark on the world, but now they merely took up space and drew dust, all potential long since echoed away to nothing. These walls had heard wonderful music, but they gave none back. He would stand in that room sometimes and wonder whether he had changed anything at all. Had a bird heard him playing and changed its course? Had the molecular makeup of the house been subtly altered by the vibration of his double bass, the sweet serenade of his guitar? Was there, anywhere in the world, evidence of the talent he had squandered?

Sometimes he believe that the ghost of his music wandered the Plain with the lost spirit of his only son.

But today, with autumn sunlight making beauty from dying leaves, there was something else on his mind. That doubt, risen from its uneasy grave. And the old anger at the lies they had been told, still tempered by grief, but no longer quashed by its intensity.

By the end of that afternoon, Tom needed to do something positive. He left work early and walked to the pub, hoping against hope, realising how foolish he was being, how naive. And yet he was still not completely surprised to see Beer-Gut sitting at the same table he had shared with his friend that previous Friday, alone this time, pensive and scared.

"Can I get you a drink?"

"Oh shit, I didn't think you'd be here!" Beer-Gut stood at his table, wide-eyed. He looked toward the door as if pla

"But you came anyway?"

The big man shrugged. He was breathing fast, eyes averted, perhaps going over whatever he had to say in his head.

"Guilt's a weird thing, isn't it?"

"Look, don't fuck with me like that," the man said quietly, staring at Tom for a few seconds before looking away again.

"I'm so sorry," Tom said, shaking his head, meaning it. He offered his hand. "I'm Tom Roberts."

Beer-Gut shook his hand; sweaty palms, but a strong grip. "Nathan King." He sat back down.

"Pleased to meet you."

King did not echo the sentiment, and Tom realised that this was probably the very last place he wanted to be right now. His whole ma

"Let me get you a refill," Tom said. At the bar he took a few moments to compose himself, and he was suddenly hit by a cool, inexplicable terror. I may discover something terrible now, he thought. Something I haven't known for ten years, and something it may be best I never know. Nothing will bring Steven back. We have a life, Jo and I. We deserve to live it in peace. He paid for the drinks and carried them back to the table, and his deeper i

Tom sat down opposite Nathan King, and prepared to have his life changed again.

It took King several minutes to begin speaking.

The two men sat there silently, letting life wash by in the swish of coats and the waft of end-of-the-day body odour. Tom watched the barmaid smiling at each customer and making them all think they were special, dropping her tips into a glass behind the bar. He listened to the bland pop song whispering from the juke box. He smelled the sharp tang of fatty burgers and chips cooking in the kitchen, a haze of smoke blurring that end of the big room. In one corner an elderly couple sat next to each other without speaking, the contact of their arms communication enough. The man was drinking stout, the woman wine, and Tom wondered how many children and grandchildren they had. People lit cigarettes, laughed, coughed, drank, stared, and none of them were aware of the tension between him and King.

At last King finished the pint Tom had bought for him, placed the glass carefully on the table, sat back and sighed. "I didn't know your son," he said.

Tom frowned, his expression question enough.

"But though I never met him, I'm not here to waste your time. You don't need to know anything about me, but to decide if what I know is of use to you, I need to know about you. And your son. And how he was killed."

Tom sat back in his chair, feeling a peculiar release now that Nathan had initiated conversation. Maybe I will hear things I don't really want to, he thought, and maybe they'll change my life. But if so, then that's only right.

"I've always suspected the story the army gave us was false," Tom said, watching King for any reaction. There was none—he was stony-faced—and Tom realised that he wanted the whole story. Whatever King had to reveal demanded that, at least.